If a school desires to achieve an upward academic movement, it should start with getting things right in the halls of instruction. Getting into the right gear of best classroom instructional practices is not necessarily a gift from God, rather success in the classroom is a phenomenon that can be sculpted and crafted over time through careful planning and execution, learning and growing from experience. Planning and execution, if well done, will have a gestation period of two to three years.
This is the more reason why every school should assume the character of a learning community where not only students are expected to learn but where teachers are also obliged to embrace a continuing culture of professional development anchored on their practical experiences in the field. No training should come in a vacuum. All training should be informed by performance gaps. Pedagogy must be a living organism that cannot afford the luxury of remaining static. To assume relevance and potency and fulfil and keep pace with the needs of a diversified student clientele, pedagogic experiences should always show signs of dynamism and evolution.
Needless to emphasise that the quest to achieve best classroom instructional practices cannot be achieved overnight or miraculously. It comes about through a series of persistent and unrelenting trials. It is sufficiently clear that teacher development is the only potent key that can unlock the hidden and dormant talents of students. Consequently, any education system that tries so hard to skirt the issue of professional development can only do so at its own peril. Teacher professional development is the lifeblood of any education system. The success of other variables depends on a dynamic, agile and ever learning teaching force. So what teachers are doing in the classroom as they engage with their students is hitherto the best-known panacea to issues surrounding student underachievement.
Accepting the reality of the paramountcy of the teacher factor in the classroom should not be misconstrued as an underestimation of the value of other critical inputs such as community engagement, adequate funding and availability of physical resources. The intention is to state as a matter of fact that a strong and inspirational teacher is needed in every classroom as the cornerstone of the learning process.
Getting schools back on track means getting this basic thing of teacher growth right. Getting things right does not mean ordering a wholesale or hotchpotch of and counter initiatives. That is a sign of panic. It means as Professor Jaap Kuiper would put it, “calming down, calming the waters and getting the (classroom - my emphasis) basics right. Whatever services and support a community in which a school is built can lend to a school can take a learning institution somewhere. Adequate and timely funding has its own role in carrying the dreams of the school forward; student efforts are very vital in the process of learning and so are issues of good school governance. But the teacher is indispensable. Even without a roof above their heads, students can learn effectively under the guidance of an able teacher.
Quality teacher instruction remains supreme and paramount. Having harped a great deal on the centrality of professional teacher development in the learning theatre, one can now have the audacity to deal with whether education systems do give this critical subject sufficient and thorough justice. The answer is an unequivocal yes in some jurisdictions and no in others. There is a good investment in the pre-service teacher development but very little goes into nurturing and sustaining continuous growth. The thinking and a flawed one is that pre-service training in and of itself can produce a good while it is simply phase one of the teacher moulding programme. It cannot be and issues of practice are proving otherwise. It is this column’s considered view that in some jurisdictions the issue of teacher development is wanting and therefore requires improvement.
A lot should not be left to chance and schools should never feel orphaned or generally left to their own devices to decide whether to do or not to do capacity building programmes. Sometimes it takes a shift in policy to alter in a very positive way the performance trajectory of an ailing education system. Here is a policy shift one is advocating for. That in-service programmes should no longer be optional for schools especially in the context of chronically low achieving schools. Making in-service or teacher capacity strengthening interventions mandatory and compulsory especially for all schools under serving students can improve learning outcomes drastically while restoring the dignity, credibility and efficiency to the learned teaching profession.
The prevailing scenario permitting struggling schools the luxury to elect to hold capacity building interventions does not suggest any serious intention and commitment to reverse the challenges of instructional practice bedevilling schools. Registering a recurring and unceasing culture of underachievement should be treated as a pandemic needing a swift and overwhelming response.
There should be no tolerable level of academic underachievement and any school falling short of achieving the purpose for which it was built must be supported to get back to winning ways. Another policy shift should come in the form of granting autonomy over finances to schools so that schools can take full responsibility over matters relating to issues of professional development. Over dependence on external training can be a long-winded process not offering swift, timely and appropriate rescue.
To succeed, no school should become familiar or immune to the stigma of underachievement. But each school must see underperformance as a scourge, which must be eradicated, with every weapon in its arsenal and with some sense of urgency. Bolstering school-based in-service programmes would require not only availing adequate funds at the right time but also some degree of autonomy to utilise the funds for the purpose intended. Together we can act to redeem our schools if academic underachievement is declared a pandemic requiring emergency interventions.
